DOUBLE AGENT

 

A BLACKHAWK NOVEL

 

 

 

Copyright Ó M.F. Kelleher 2024, 2025

Fifth Edition

 

The right of M.F.Kelleher to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or transmitted into any retrieval system, in any form, or by means without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any authorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

 

ISBN. 9798320574646

Cover artwork by Claire Meczes

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

The chill November air sits across the offices, houses and parks of Frankfurt, as Gabrielle Lane, MI6 Senior Field Agent, turns off Friedensstrasse in the centre of the banking district and pulls up on a service road. She stops the black Mercedes van fifty yards from the security barrier in front of her.

Agent Hans looks across at Gabby and they are silent. He turns his head back and his brown eyes look towards the entrance, capturing every detail.

She puts the vehicle into gear and starts towards the gate. The guards are suspicious today, she can tell.

Gabby has been monitoring this building for a month; learning about the routines and timings of the security people and the employees within the headquarters of Friedrich Anderson AG.

The guard stops and stares at her, as if trying to recognise her from somewhere. There are two seconds of dead air, when the man doesn’t move and Gabby can feel the hairs on her arms.

Then the man hands her back the plastic ID badge, turns and nods to his colleague. The barrier rises and the van moves on further into the roads behind the offices.

The Mercedes drops down a ramp to the parking area in the basement and Gabby pulls up into one of the spaces reserved for maintenance vehicles. Hans climbs out and opens the rear doors. Agent Laravelle rises from her seat in the back of the van, already wearing her backpack. She hands Gabby and Hans theirs, then they all walk to the lift doors and Hans calls a lift.

“Set timers,” says Gabby, looking at her wristwatch, and the other two follow suit. “Ten minutes, starts…now.” They all press the buttons on their devices simultaneously, then walk into the waiting car. As they ascend, the three of them don’t talk. They know the plan, Gabby has gone through it with them five times in the last two days.

At the second floor, Hans steps out and doesn’t look back. The lift doors close and over the next minute, Laravelle gets out on the 4th floor and finally Gabby emerges on the top floor of the building. On the different levels, the women are in sync. They both know the floor layout. They turn left out of the lifts, then along the main spine corridor that has offices along either side. Workers are busy at computers or talking in pairs and groups about Friedrich Anderson business.

The service rooms are in the centre of each floor plan.

MI6 had arranged for building key cards to be stolen last week. The women slide the cards into the door locks, the lights go green and they disappear inside.

The backpacks have two sections, the top compartment contains the electronics, while the smoke bombs sit in the base of each bag. They pull out the electronic boxes which had been delivered yesterday from London via BABS, the British Intelligence covert distribution network used to move kit to any country of the world without being detected or checked.

Laravelle unscrews the service panel on the 4th floor and flicks through the cabling before her. She has memorised the colour sequence and tugs the green pair of wires out of the loom before shredding a length of the insulation. She fits the connectors from the black box onto the bared copper and sticks the box onto the front panel using its magnetic grabs.

Next, she pulls out the extension pole from the bag and attaches it to the backpack. She sets the smoke bomb timer, zips up the bag then raises it to the ceiling tiles in the room, pushing one tile enough to slide the bag out of view. She collapses the pole and puts it in her cargo pants pocket, then slips out of the door and back to the corridor.

As she emerges, a security guard is there, ten feet away.

She smiles at him.

“Got your badge?” he says in German. Laravelle pulls the ID on its elasticated lanyard towards him and he grabs hold, looking intensely at the photo of her with her newly-dyed blonde hair.

“Are you new?”

“First week,” she says.

He frowns. “What have you been doing in there?” He nods at the service room that she has just stepped out of.

“Routine maintenance,” says Laravelle. “The alarms needed checking.”

He is still frowning. “Show me.” He walks towards the service room door, swipes his card and walks inside. Laravelle follows him. The room is twelve feet square with equipment lights flashing on three racks across the space. The guard walks down the first aisle, looking at all of the machinery. Laravelle checks her watch, five minutes to go.

The guard walks out of the first aisle and into the second. Laravelle remains standing near the door as he inspects. He sees nothing untoward in the second aisle and moves into the last one, where the black box is attached. Laravelle moves in complete silence to block his exit. He still has his back to her when he sees the box.

He only manages to say, “Is this box supposed to…” before she pushes the hypodermic syringe into his neck and he falls to the floor. Laravelle turns and walks out of the room, back down the corridor and to the lifts. She presses the button for the car and stands uneasily, trying to look invisible as three people come along for a lift while she is there.

On the top floor, Gabby didn’t encounter any security and she now stands in the basement again, waiting outside of the lift doors.

Hans’ task is different on the 2nd floor. This is where the IT Control Room takes up most of the space. He emerges from the lift doors and he can see the computing and security equipment that drives the building sealed behind a vast glass wall. He walks to the access door and swipes his key card. The light doesn’t change from its static red. He breathes out silently and calmly swipes again. The red glow remains for two seconds, then finally, switches to green and a low clunk indicates that the lock has opened.

Hans walks in. In his backpack are two electronic devices. The first will drive the black boxes upstairs and cause a momentary blackout to the whole IT system. His second device is a Bleed Point that will allow London to remotely interrogate the systems within Friedrich Anderson.

Hans takes out the first device, and locates the rack where it needs to be fitted. He doesn’t encounter any difficulties and it is in place within two minutes. He checks his watch, six minutes to go.

Next, the Bleed Point. He moves to Rack 27 and unscrews the access plate. This device must be fitted inside the racking to remain undetected. He pulls out the connecting wires and works quickly to fit each of the ten links. He is on link nine when the door light turns green and an IT engineer walks in.

Hans tries to continue at the same work rate even though he now has company, but his fingers are sweaty and his screwdriver slips and rips a shard of skin from his hand.

The engineer puts his head around the end of the racking aisle. “Alright?” says the man.

“Yup, all good,” says Hans.

“What are you working on?”

“Just routine.” Hans’ voice wavers, his own nerves are annoying him.

The man continues walking closer. Hans has his whole body turned away from him, trying to block any decent view of his work. Link ten slips onto the right terminal and Hans screws it tight, then he quickly replaces the racking cover.

He turns to the man, who is looking at him with some intensity. “I haven’t seen you before, have I?” he says.

“Freelance Contractor,” says Hans. “Day rate, you should try it, better than being staff.”

The man pauses. There’s a second when the two of them just look at each other.

“I need to be going,” says Hans, and pushes passed the man who doesn’t seem to want to move.

Hans is nearly at the door when the man calls. “Hey!”

“Yeah?”

He walks up to Hans and stops too close to him for comfort.

“You forgot this.” He holds up the screwdriver.

“Thanks, mate.” Hans takes the tool, opens the door and walks back to the lift.

In the basement, Laravelle arrives and relates what happened on her floor. “That injection will keep him unconscious for fifteen minutes,” says Gabby.

Hans arrives and gives a thumbs up. They all retreat to the Mercedes, Laravelle driving this time and Hans in the back of the van. They all put on headsets and Hans pulls out his laptop.

“One minute to go,” says Gabrielle into the comms.

As the van emerges from the depths of the car park, a loud explosion can be heard from the upper stories of the building. The women look at each other.

“One of the timers must have been off,” says Gabby. “We need to get out of here.”

Laravelle drives towards the security barrier. The guards have been alerted by the explosion and don’t raise the gate. Laravelle looks at Gabby sitting next to her without words.

One guard stands by Laravelle’s open window, waiting for more information before he does anything.

“Drive,” says Gabby almost inaudibly.

Laravelle slams down the accelerator and the Mercedes launches towards the exit. A second explosion booms out across the city. On the headsets, Hans says. “That’s the main sequence starting.”

The Mercedes snaps the security barrier and the guard pulls out his handgun. Several shots thud home into the back of the vehicle, as Laravelle accelerates towards the junction with the main road. The guard is running now and his colleague joins in the chase.

“Just go straight through the junction,” says Gabby and Laravelle doesn’t slow down. She swerves out into the road, a car sounds its horn, another smashes into a road sign and a third hits the car in front of it as the drivers take evasive action. Laravelle pushes the vehicle faster. The two security guards are running diagonally across the front of the building forecourt to cut off Laravelle’s escape. They reach the corner as the van arrives and they open fire again, aiming for the tyres.

Smoke is billowing out of two floors of the Friedrich Anderson building now, to their right.

“System coming down in three, two, one,” says Hans. “Blackout.”

Gabby looks out at the office building and can see the lights inside, and the illuminated logo on the front wall, all go off.

“IT System latching,” says Hans in their headsets.

Laravelle accelerates. She watches the guards in the rear view mirror, but they gradually slow and stop their chase. She takes the Mercedes on for a minute, around a corner, then sharp right into an old industrial site. She drives a hundred yards further on to a warehouse at the back.

“Failed to lock,” says Hans. “Second attempt.” He rubs his hand across his two-day old beard.

Their van’s tyres squeal on the concrete floor as Laravelle brings the vehicle to a halt. The women sit and wait as they listen to their comms.

There are five seconds of dead air, then he says. “Latched.”

Gabby takes a deep breath out.

The doors of the van open simultaneously as they scramble out and across to a Volvo XC90. Gabby gets into the driver’s seat, the others slam the doors, and the car moves towards the warehouse exit.

“Did you set the timer?” she says to Hans.

“Yup.”

One second later, as they emerge into the daylight, the Mercedes explodes into a fireball and flames lick out towards the departing Volvo.

“Has the Bleed Point worked?” says Gabby.

“Confirmed,” says Hans. “London have messaged to say they have access into the IT.”

Gabby turns away from the city centre and westwards towards the safe house on the outskirts of Frankfurt.

*

The sound of a helicopter causes Gabby to walk out and watch as it descends into the field opposite. Two men in dark suits jump out and make sure everything is safe before they help the Head of MI6 Global Operations, Sir Bernard Macintosh, out of his seat. The group walks towards Gabby as she waits.

“Good afternoon, Blackhawk,” he says as he gets near.

“Hello, Sir Bernard.”

They walk inside and sit at the kitchen table in the farm house that is Location Omega Nine, one of the newest safe houses that MI6 have established in the EU.

“All went OK, I hear?” he says, pushing back some of his mop of greying hair that the rotors had disturbed.

She nods. “A couple of wrinkles but yes, objective reached.”

“I said to you a fortnight ago, that I needed to have some conversations with the PM before I could brief you further. I’ve had those chats now and she’s in agreement.”

Gabby remains silent.

“This is your formal briefing on Operation Barwood,” he begins. “We have intelligence to suggest that Friedrich Anderson, the international consultancy and banking group that you broke into, is a major player in illegal arms sales into and out of the EU and Africa.”

“It’s mostly untraceable, but they do have some white market operations such as funding military loans for various countries. However, they have become less and less fussy about the ethics of it all and now, if someone will pay, they’ll supply.”

“Isn’t most military spending covert anyway?” says Gabby. “Countries don’t want everyone knowing what they’re buying.”

“Agreed, but Friedrich Anderson, in the last three years, have focused more of their efforts on funding terrorist groups and this has grown to the extent that British security interests are being threatened.”

“What’s the mission?” she says.

“Destroy Friedrich Anderson.”

Gabby nods.

“You probably know that they’re owned by Amandine Lacroix. Daughter of Albert Lacroix, the Swiss Industrialist who died five years ago when his plane crashed in the Alps. The intelligence on that incident, is that she had him killed to take control of the company because he had started to question the ethics of the people they were funding.”

“She and her husband Vincent Fevrier live in her father’s old house on Lake Zurich,” says Sir Bernard. “She’s Chair of Friedrich Anderson, and flies back and forth between Switzerland and the office here in Frankfurt.”

“Isn’t her husband a German politician?” she says.

“He is. A member of the Bundestag, so spends half the week in Berlin.”

She listens, her eyes unblinking.

Sir Bernard continues. “Comms Branch in London have phone taps on the houses, so we have some intelligence for you already. With the Bleed Point that you put in place, we’ve got good coverage.”

“OK.”

“There’s one further element. To brief you on this next information, I have had to obtain PM approval to raise your security level to SCI Sensitive Compartmented Information.”

Sir Bernard pauses.

“Vincent Fevrier, as well as being a German politician, is a German spy and works as a senior field officer in the German Domestic Intelligence Service, the BfV.”

“That knowledge doesn’t need extra clearance,” she says.

He holds up his hand to stop her saying more.

“Vincent Fevrier is also Agent Foxfold, a British double agent.”

“He’s spying on the German government?” Gabby looks at Sir Bernard.

“On their security measures,” he says. “That’s the reality these days.”

“So, we need to protect Foxfold, while we bring down his wife?”

Sir Bernard nods, then says, “You can’t tell your team about Foxfold’s double status, only you have clearance.”

She breathes out.

He watches her face and leaves a gap of time to let her think. Then, he says. “I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea before I push off back to London.”

As the helicopter takes off an hour later, Gabby stands in the doorway of the farmhouse, watching it rise into the dying light of the day. Laravelle walks out and hands her a glass of wine.

They chink glasses.

“Briefing, Jenny, tomorrow 9am,” says Gabby, and they turn back into the safe house.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

Since she first saw it, Amandine had always wanted to live in this house.

Her father had bought it when she was in her twenties, so she didn’t spend her childhood here, but she has a crystal-clear memory of walking into this room for the first time and seeing the view.

Lake Zurich stretches out to the horizon in front of her. She never tires of watching the movement of the water and the boats bobbing at their moorings.

Amandine is tall. Her father had told her that it would be a disadvantage but it hasn’t been. She is wearing a dark blue Chanel suit and her reddish-brown hair is tied back with a gold clasp. Her blue eyes look kind, but not sentimental.

Her assistant, Bernadette, walks in from the hallway but Amandine doesn’t know she’s there until the woman coughs. The assistant is very slight, with a mass of dark hair and wire-framed glasses.

“All the bookings for the weekend after next are confirmed,” says Bernadette. “Flights, hire car, hotel, restaurants.” She coughs again.

“Thank you. Are you alright?”

“No, I’m feeling dreadful, actually. I was thinking I might take a week off and go to my parents in Paris.”

“Can you get cover from the agency?”

“Of course, I’ll sort it out.”

The assistant disappears back into the corridor of the house and Amandine returns to her water watching. The boat that she and her husband own glides into her view and heads towards the jetty at the end of their garden. She picks up her camel overcoat and steps out to the patio, then across the lawn to meet her husband as he brings the Azimut AZ 40 craft up to the mooring.

“How was the Board Meeting, last night?” he says, as he jumps onto the land and puts his arm around her. He is wearing Armani jeans and a zip-up jacket. His grey eyes have blue outer edges and his dark hair is cut short.

“Fraught,” she says.

“Oh?”

“There was a fire or something in the offices, we had to use a hotel conference room across the road.”

“Anyone hurt?”

“I don’t know,” she says.

“How was the meeting otherwise?”

“Arno and Sebastian were up to their usual tricks.”

“You should get rid of them,” says Vincent. They slowly walk back to the house. “Get them voted off the Board. The others will support you.”

“Maybe.” She smiles at him. “Are you here for dinner?”

“No, heading back to Berlin.” She takes a deep breath out but not so he can hear.

“We’ve got our Florence weekend, haven’t we?” he says.

“Mmm. We should spend more time together.”

“I know,” says Vincent. “Soon.” He kisses her on the nose. “I need to change out of these clothes, the car’s here in twenty minutes.”

He walks back inside the house, leaving her standing in the cold air.

Later in the evening, the cab driver who picks up Vincent at Berlin Brandenburg airport knows the backstreets and they avoid the queues as they track into the centre of the city. He pulls up outside the Hotel Adlon Kempinski on the street called Unter den Linden in the heart of Berlin.

The doorman lifts Vincent’s suitcase out of the car, and Vincent leaves ten Euros in the man’s hand before striding inside. He has stayed here many times despite also having a flat in Berlin for his work as a Member of Parliament.

Vincent picks up his key card from reception and walks to the lifts then up to the fourth floor. As he pushes open the door to Room 407, he sees that she has ordered champagne. He likes it when she does that.

“Darling,” says Mia. They kiss, then he pours two glasses of alcohol for them. “I ordered dinner on room service too.” She smiles at him and pulls the tie out of her black hair.

After making love, they lie in the king size bed and occasionally doze.

“How’s the information gathering going?” she says later on.

“Is London pressurising you?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Do you run any other agents?” he says, turning to her.

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“Is Mia your real name?”

“Why all these questions, suddenly?” She sits up and moves her leg so it touches his.

“I just wanted to know how real this is, this thing between us.”

Mia leans towards him and kisses him. “It’s real,” she whispers.

Her attentiveness to him seems to satisfy any immediate doubts in his mind, she notices. But, if Vincent is starting to want anything more, she knows that London will need a new plan when the time comes to stop using this man as a British asset. She decides that she will flag the point in her daily report to Sir Bernard, then turns back and kisses Vincent again.

*

“Gavin!” Becky always manages to sound angry these days, he thinks as his wife’s voice rolls up the stairs of their London town house in Maida Vale. “Are you up there?” He is a tall man, over six foot with dark eyes and short dark hair.

“Coming!” He stands up and squeezes around the tight stair turn from his attic office. “What?”

She’s on the landing. “It says on the calendar that you’re out tomorrow?” Her blonde hair is tied back in a ponytail.

“Yes, some dinner or other.”

“Can you cancel?” she says, her brows scrunching together making her face even more severe.

“No.” He doesn’t say any more, but feels he should have done.

“I’ve got a function,” she says. “Drinks reception for my new director at work.”

He breathes out. “Can we ask your mother to babysit?”

Becky’s face doesn’t move from being annoyed. “She looked after her last week. Lily will think we’re never around.”

“I’m not sure a seven-year-old would think that.” He makes a disbelieving face. “She loves her grandmother, and your mother has nothing to do these days.”

Becky turns and walks down the stairs to the ground floor, still talking. “It’s taking advantage of her kind nature.”

The doorbell rings and echoes up the staircase. “Can you get that?” she calls. “I’m giving Lily her tea.”

Gavin walks down and opens the front door. On the doorstep is a woman he doesn’t know with bright green eyes and brunette hair poking out of the sides of a white woolly hat. “Larry sent me,” she says.

Gavin doesn’t say anything in response but turns to get his coat from a hook in the hallway. “I’m just going to talk to this lady, a constituency matter,” he calls to Becky in the kitchen, then pulls on his dogtooth overcoat, picks up a set of keys from the tray by the front door and steps out into the November evening.

There is fog in the air. They turn left, then walk for a moment without words.

“You’re new?” says Gavin. “Where’s Larry?”

“He won’t be coming anymore, I’m your new contact. My name is Rose.” The woman’s voice is emotionless.

“The same arrangement?” says Gavin, turning to look at her.

“Yes, nothing else has changed.”

There is more dead air as they walk.

Eventually, Rose breaks the silence. “We need you to find some more insights for us.”

“Larry just used to send me a message,” says Gavin. “I don’t like you calling round to my home.”

“We want to make sure you understand,” says Rose.

“Understand what? Nothing’s changed, you said. I give you information about MPs and civil servants and you pay me. That’s the arrangement.” Gavin is getting slightly annoyed by her hesitant communications style. He takes a deep breath out and a cloud of condensed air rises from his mouth.

“What’s the new job for me, then?”

“We want to know about a man called Charles Webster,” she says. “He’s a senior buyer in the Defence Equipment & Support Agency.”

“I’ve met him a couple of times,” says Gavin. “It’ll take a week or so to find anything. I need to have some chats in the bars around Westminster.”

This woman is making Gavin uncomfortable by her stillness.

“I’ll come back and see you here in a fortnight, then,” says Rose, unsmilingly.

“No, not here. I’ll message you on the email that Larry gave me. I’ll tell you when I’ve got something.”

She is obviously unhappy with the idea, but doesn’t voice her opinion. There’s a pause and she continues to look at him. Then, she holds out her hand and Gavin momentarily hesitates, then shakes the woman’s hand.

Rose turns and walks away. Her outline is gradually engulfed by the fog as Gavin watches her go. He wonders what happened to Larry for a moment, then walks back to the house, turns his key in the lock and immediately goes into the kitchen.

Becky is sitting opposite Lily on the built-in bench seating, while their daughter eats fish fingers.

“You’re back quickly. Who was it?” says Becky.

“Constituent. Odd woman, actually. A bit creepy.”

“What did she say, then?”

“It was just her manner.” Becky turns back to Lily and makes a surprised face as the girl eats and she laughs.

“Are you sure you can’t cancel tomorrow?” says his wife, looking pained.

“Sorry. I’ve got a lot on.” He walks over to her and kisses her on the lips, then disappears upstairs.

Becky makes an animated grumpy face to the girl, who giggles again. “I’d better call Grandma,” she says to her and the girl nods her head excitedly.

Gavin walks back up to his study and starts looking at his emails from today because he likes to keep on top of things. His new job as a junior defence minister has doubled his workload, as he has to do all of that as well as his normal work as the MP of Portsmouth East.

He wonders if he should ask this Rose woman for more money. His fee hasn’t increased in the two years since Larry first approached him. Maybe with Rose taking over, there’s a chance to get more.

He knows that he wouldn’t have started all this if he didn’t need the money. School fees, holidays, dinners - they all mount up. He doesn’t know how other MPs do it. Gavin often reassures himself that this information about his colleagues could easily be found online these days if only the Larrys and Roses of this world would put in a little effort. It’s easy money. Some people are lazy, he thinks, and returns to answering his emails.

*

The Carlton Restaurant in central Zurich is one of Kate’s favourites. She has been here half a dozen times. It’s colourful, with subtle red and yellow lit panels on the walls and bench seating that makes it cosy when it's cold outside.

This is the second time that she and Davide have been out together. She’s not sure about him. One of the disadvantages of working as an assassin for MI6 is that all personal relationships have to be approved by London. Her personal policy, though, is to not tell them formally until she’s slept with someone at least once. She and Davide haven’t gone to bed yet, maybe they won’t.

He is talking about his work, which is architecture. The two of them had met at the gym and she likes his eyes and makes her laugh. He is dark, as opposed to her blonde.

The conversation is easy and the evening is pleasant enough but it’s not making her think there’s anything in this. They part outside the restaurant and he kisses her on the cheek. He offers to walk her back to her flat but she says she always feels safe in this city. She doesn’t tell him that she can kill with her bare hands, which is the real reason she always feels safe.

The journey is only ten minutes and Kate walks straight down Bahnhofstrasse then cuts left towards the water. She is a hundred yards from her flat when a dark blue SUV draws up beside her. It has blacked out windows. The side door slides open and a man jumps out.

He is all in black and is wearing a balaclava that obscures his features. She can see he is brandishing a Glock 19 handgun. The man lunges for her and tries to get hold of her left upper arm but she twists out of it. She leans her bodyweight back and Kate’s right foot delivers a kick near to his groin.

He lashes out again with his free hand, trying to get a firm grip of her, but she swivels her body and hits him again with a kick from her other foot. He is momentarily stopped by the impact but then he keeps coming.

Kate has no handgun on her, but does have an SOG 2000 combat knife that she carries at all times. Her hand moves behind her and pulls out the knife from the back of her jeans. As the man comes towards her again, she swings the blade around in the night air and it comes within an inch of his face.

She can tell he is military trained but, also, that he’s not an assassin, otherwise he would never have attacked like he did, with no precision. Assassination is a science, not an art.

He does have strength though and this time does get a firm grip on her arm. He brings his handgun up as though he is going to bring it down on her head. Kate has enough time, in the second the gun is travelling downwards, to shift her leg and push her bodyweight into him just as his hand is within a few inches of her head. He loses his grip and the weapon clatters away on the ground.

She brings her knife around her body, laces his free arm with her free arm and pulls hard. The move bends his body back and she pushes him to ground, then grabs a handful of his hair and brings the knife up to his throat. Only his eyes are visible through the mask, but she can see he isn’t scared.

Kate pushes the blade further into his skin. She drops his head onto the ground with a thud, rifles through his pockets and finds a wallet. She flips it open and scatters the contents out onto the ground. The Euro notes blow down the street from a slight breeze that rolls down to the river, but there is no ID.

The knife is starting to break the skin on his throat.

Suddenly, he pushes upwards off the ground. She clings on, but he is too strong for her. He makes a fist and it hits her in the face, knocking her backwards.

He pushes his face into hers. “We saw you, this is a warning from Mr Zetkin.”

Her head is muzzy but she hears the sound of his running feet pounding the ground as he heads back to his vehicle. Then, she hears a slamming door and the engine scream away as the car heads back towards the main road.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

There’s frost on the window of the safe house as Laravelle makes coffee. She always likes getting up early, it makes her feel prepared for whatever the day contains.

There’s the sound of feet padding down the stairs and Hans walks in wearing running gear.

“You coming out, Jenny?” he says.

“Tomorrow, Gordon.” She uses his real name too.

Hans pulls the back door open and disappears into the morning, passed barren fields that surround the safe house, waiting for next year’s crop.

Laravelle sits by the window in the lounge looking out at the landscape.

After a few minutes, Gabby comes down too, and sits next to her.

“How are you feeling?” says Gabby.

“Good. Can you tell me anything yet about this new op?”

“You’ll be undercover as a personal assistant to Amandine Lacroix. Your name will be Natalie Ducasse, a French national.”

Laravelle drinks some coffee.

“The usual PA, Bernadette Moreau, was tracked last week by the spooks in the British Embassy in Zurich. They slipped some Z-15 drops into her drink at a coffee shop two days ago.”

“What do they do?” says Laravelle.

“Z-15s make you feel unwell for two or three weeks, but are then untraceable,” says Gabby. “London already had taps on the phones in Amandine’s house and they intercepted a call from Bernadette yesterday afternoon to a temp agency asking for cover as she is going off sick. They diverted the call to GCHQ and a fake agency confirmed that Natalie Ducasse will arrive tomorrow morning in Zurich.”

“OK,” says Laravelle. “What do I need to do?”

“Get Amandine to trust you, be indispensable. When the timing is right, we’ll break the bank from the inside.”

The sound of the backdoor banging shut precedes Hans’ return from his run. He puts his head around the door frame. “Get showered, Gordon, then it’s a full briefing after breakfast,” says Gabby. He nods and disappears upstairs.

They eat then gather in an extension to the main house. Gabby talks for ten minutes about Operation Barwood and explains the objectives.

“There’s a delivery expected at ten this morning from London,” she says towards the end of her briefing. “It will have your deep cover package, Laravelle - passport, clothes, plane tickets and so on.”

“And they’re bringing a tech ops bundle, Hans. Can you set up the control room and screens in the back bedroom?”

“Yup.”

“We need more research on Friedrich Anderson,” she says. “On the directors, on Amandine, on her husband Vincent Fevrier, and on any family members. London have done the outline research, but we need the detail.”

“Laravelle,” Gabby continues. “I’ll need a daily report from you when you’re undercover. Tell me what Amandine is doing, who she’s meeting, and what emails she’s sending. If she is personally meeting clients connected to terrorist groups, then we need to know that before it happens with as much notice as possible.”

“Got it,” says Laravelle.

The sound of a lorry rolls in from the road outside.

“That’s our delivery,” says Gabby. They all stand up and head for the front door.

*

The headquarters of MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service is in a building known as Vauxhall Cross. There’s a thick red carpet on the top corridor, which denotes the seniority of the people who have offices on this floor.

Sir Bernard opens his door and turns right towards the conference room. As he walks in, Sir Ralph Coltrane turns from looking out across the River Thames, and his face breaks out into a broad smile.

“Bernard, you’re looking well.”

“You too, Ralph.” They shake hands.

Sir Ralph Coltrane is the Permanent Secretary in the UK’s Foreign Office, the most senior civil servant in the ministry, responsible for managing the relationship between the Foreign Secretary, Georgina Riley, and the civil servants who work for her.

“How’s the Minister?” says Sir Bernard, walking to a tray on a side board with cups, a teapot and milk in a jug. “Tea?” The other man nods.

“She’s a difficult one,” says Sir Ralph, opening his eyes more widely. “Only six months in, and causing a bit of havoc, but we’ll get control of her. She wants to know everything that’s going on.”

“Not a surprise, surely?” says Sir Bernard, handing him a cup.

“She wants detail, Bernard. We haven’t always got that, as you know.”

“I’m not sure I do. What detail do you mean?”

“Spending plans, and how the budgets of initiatives from other ministries will impinge on Foreign Affairs.”

Sir Bernard smiles. “Isn’t that democracy, Ralph?” he says. They both sit down. “A new civilian broom every year or two to sweep away the cobwebs inside the civil service?”

“I take it that you’re joking. You know as well as I do that some things never change irrespective of who’s in power.”

Sir Bernard leaves a pause and changes the subject.

“What’s the urgent matter you wanted to talk about?” he says. “Your office was adamant about you and I meeting face-to-face today.”

“The Minister called me yesterday,” says Sir Ralph. “As I was coming out of the tube on my way home. She’d had a session with David Walker, the Home Secretary. MI5 have reported to Walker that there is evidence of persistent leaks from Members of Parliament.”

“Don’t they leak all the time?” says Sir Bernard.

“Often, they do. But, this is more serious. It includes details of discussions at the closed Defence Select Committee meetings.”

“Do we know who’s doing it?”

“Not yet, Connie has committed resource to ferret them out,” says Sir Ralph, referring to Constance Barrett, Director of Operations for MI5, the UK’s domestic intelligence organisation.

“Why are you telling me this, Ralph?”

“They want it to be a joint five/six op, Bernard. The information Connie has so far is that the leaks are being encouraged by overseas players. So, there’s a non-UK element to all of this, and we need your boys and girls involved.”

“Do we know what specifically has got out?”

“A mixture, there are some contractual details from the procurement agency, the DE&S,” says Sir Ralph. He stops to drink some tea. “And personal data about parliamentarians and civil servants.”

“For blackmail, presumably?”

“You and Connie know about that sort of thing more than I, Bernard. Safe to say, the leaks are significant enough that they have reached ministerial-level chat. That makes us look bad. Makes it look like we haven’t got a grip on it all.”

“Do we know how long this has been going on?”

Sir Ralph looks uncomfortable. “Possibly two or three years.”

“And we didn’t pick it up before now?”

Sir Ralph splays both of his hands to show his palms in a sign that says, nothing can be done about that.

“I’ll talk to Connie,” says Sir Bernard.

“Thank you, old man.” Sir Ralph stands. “I need to be going. The minister is meeting the PM at twelve, and there’s no agenda, apparently, so we’re putting together a brief on possibles.”

They walk to the lift.

“This could be a dirty one, Bernard, leaking MPs, defence information. It makes me feel very edgy.”

The white light comes on above their heads and a muted tone indicates the lift has arrived. The doors open and Sir Ralph disappears inside.

*

In her inbox this morning, Kate found a new reconnaissance order for a planned assassination that has taken her most of the day to complete. She drove to the given location, which had been in the Swiss mountains, just south of the Lägern peak. She had surveyed the area and taken photographs of the proposed kill site.

She drives down to a viewing point that is halfway up the mountain and parks her Jaguar F-Type. Kate pushes a combination of buttons on the dash and the satnav screen changes to show the crest of MI6. On her driver’s door, she flicks a tab and a panel pings out to reveal a keyboard. She pulls it out and logs into the MI6 Operations System, Oberon.

There’s a section on the order for her feedback about the suitability of the suggested kill location. She decides to dictate her words.

“Agent Coniston comments on the proposed termination plan. Job number 2734, dash, J3,” she begins. “I have surveyed the location proposed by Ops Branch and cannot approve this plan for the following reason. The sniper position suggested has no clear sightline to the kill location. It is amongst trees and if someone had actually bothered to check…” She pauses, then continues. “Delete that last sentence. The trees around the sniper position are too dense, I suggest a better location is 47 28 North 82 23 East. The other details seem OK. I have no intelligence of the target’s movements to know if we could get the target to be at the planned kill location, however.”

She closes the job on the screen and packs away the keyboard. The attack by the man last night has made her jittery. She sits for ten minutes, looking at the valley beyond the bonnet of the Jag.

Kate doesn’t normally get nervous. It’s one of the key qualities about her personality that allowed her to pass through the training for being an assassin with top marks. Holding your nerve in this job is critical.

She is part of the elite C9 Branch within the Secret Intelligence Service. C9 contains all of the dedicated assassins in MI6. It is an overlay network, not controlled by the spooks in the British embassies worldwide, but directly by London Centre.

Kate noses her Jaguar down the mountain roads and towards her flat in Zurich. She parks and walks up the stairs to her front door. Kate is a night owl, and part of her night-time routine is as a gamer. Often, she has seen the sun come up as she completes the final levels of a war game, a real life killer playing at being a virtual one.

She hasn’t reported the attack to London yet, because she wants to understand more about it. She goes into Oberon and searches for Mr Zetkin. A set of links comes up showing where Zetkin is mentioned in any MI6 live operations.

Immediately, she can see Operation Barwood mentioned, being led by Gabby Lane. They’ve known each other for a couple of years, since Gabby was suspected of being a mole and Kate nearly killed her.

Kate messages her, suggesting they meet up.

One other way that might give her insights into Zetkin is by using the dark web, those websites that can only be reached by people who know how to find them. She loads her Tor browser and starts to search.

She finds a site called Bilehouse, a forum that seems to be populated by people discussing crime. Kate reads through the threads searching for any mention of Zetkin, but she finds nothing. She creates posts on Bilehouse about the one thing she knows will get her noticed – killing.

Kate itemises all of the weapons she is proficient in and says she operates in the Zurich area. She says she is a discrete and professional assassin, and highlights anonymised past kills.

She comes out of the dark web and starts to play a battlefield game. Just as she is slaughtering a whole brigade of enemy troops, a notification appears in the top corner of her screen from Bilehouse. It’s from someone called L'Équipe84. She replies, and they ask about her experience, which she relates.

A chat box appears on the screen with the words. “You seem to have good expertise.”

“Do you have work you need doing?” she types.

“I want to meet you, first.”

“Name the place and time,” types Kate.

“You know Opfikon?” types L'Équipe84. “On the way to the airport.”

“I know it.”

“Tomorrow, midnight, at this address.”

An address clicks up into the chat box and Kate takes a picture with her phone.

Then, the chat box closes.